The Whole Enchilada (3 page)

“Yes. Look, Goldy,” Marla began, “don't you want to have a shower? Julian?” But he had disappeared. “I'm sorry you hit a boulder, and I'm sorry I called you so early, but I figured you would
want
to know—”

“About some guy who may or may not turn up, looking for Holly? D'you suppose he's a creditor? Maybe he's the one I just about killed, down on Arnold Palmer Avenue.”

We were interrupted by yipping, barking, and howling from the three beagles Marla had adopted from a puppy farm. The trio of females—named Madly, Sadly, and Gladly—had grown exponentially in the past year. As they raced outside, they greeted me with enthusiasm and sniffed the air, hoping for treats. But with their canine sixth sense, they knew something was wrong. After I gave them obligatory pats, they looked to Marla for a signal.

Marla's face, meanwhile, had turned bright pink. “Holly didn't want me to tell you about her money issues.”

“Why not? The three of us were, and I hope still are,
friends,
Marla. Besides, you told
Julian
. What's with that? Holly isn't paying me to do this dinner tonight, so it's not as if I would worry her check would bounce.”

Marla put her hands on her newly slim hips. The dogs began to whine. “Julian wasn't supposed to say anything to you. It's just . . . I learned these things, and when Julian asked me about Holly as soon as he moved in with you, I told him. Next time I saw Holly, I asked if I could tell
you
. She said no. She didn't want anyone to be aware of her financial issues.”

“But why is it a secret, even from me? You and Holly and I were in Amour Anonymous together. We took care of each other and talked about everything. We just had a reunion
,
for God's sake.”

Marla held out her hands. “She's ashamed.”

“Of what? Why isn't she going to a lawyer and demanding a bigger child-support check from George?” I pulled out the cake and made for the front door.

“She is, I think. Or I'm guessing. I know she sold her Audi, as well as Drew's, to raise cash. Plus, don't think I haven't asked if I could help her. I did. She refused. All right, girls,” she said to the dogs, “let's go.”

I held the door open for the beagles as Julian came back out. The house, or the property it sat on, had belonged to Marla's sister, Adele Farquhar, now deceased. That had been a different, sad story. The residence next door, empty and unsold for years, had been reputed to be jinxed.
That
house, Marla had plowed under. I shuddered.

Marla's new home only resembled the Farquhars' in its footprint. The exterior was clad in creamy beige stucco, the roof topped with copper-colored steel tiles. Inside, Marla had chosen soaring ceilings, three stories of windows overlooking the far mountains, acres of blond wood, a river-rock fireplace and hearth, and of course, a state-of-the-art surveillance system. In all, the whole place was as soothingly modern as Adele's had been green-and-pink traditional.

In the kitchen, Julian had already stored the second ice-cream cooler. He marched in behind us with boxes that he piled on the granite-topped island, then threw me a quick glance. I still must have looked thunderous, because he opened a box and began moving silently between it and Marla's oversize, stainless-steel refrigerator. Marla, meanwhile, shooed the beagles into their fenced dog run outside.

“Look, Marla,” I said when she returned, “Holly is my friend, too. She was in our group. She belongs to our church
.
Why keep her problems secret from me?”

“You can ask her if you want,” Marla said flatly. “She absolutely, positively will not tell me anything more about it. And, Julian, you shouldn't have said anything, either.”

“Sorry,” muttered Julian. “I guess I thought Goldy would know, like from Arch or something. I mean, don't Arch and Drew carpool to school?”

“Yes,” I said acidly, “but Arch doesn't keep me up-to-date on the real estate market. He also refuses to share any gossip at all.”

Marla held out her hands again in explanation. “The
only
reason I found out about Holly's house in the club is that it's a matter of public record. When I was thinking about moving over here, the house I was selling had to compete, pricewise, with her attempted short sale. You want a shower? Then some coffee?”

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks. Decaf.” I groaned.

“Killing a boulder, getting soaked, and no caffeine. No wonder you're in such a bad mood.”

I had a quick shower, dried my hair, and drank Marla's iced decaf, which was marginally better than what I had at home. Julian said he would shower after he'd had a swim in Marla's pool. By the time I came back to the kitchen, he'd schlepped in all the boxes.

As we unpacked, Marla said that at the country club, she had gleaned the tidbit she had told Julian, who in turn had shared it with me. Yes, Holly was living almost rent-free in a house over by Aspen Meadow Lake. It was a place she just had to move her nice furniture into and keep tidy, in case potential buyers dropped in. Marla added that she'd learned from me about Drew transferring to CBHS from Elk Park Prep. And how come
I
hadn't asked Holly the reasons for her actions?

“Oh,” I replied, “I assumed Edith had gone on one of her ball-busting campaigns. I asked Arch, and he refused to grill Drew. Plus, I . . . was trying to be polite.”

“A-
ha
.” Marla pointed a red-painted nail at me. “And after all, I
am
famed for my rudeness.”

“Marla, I didn't mean—”

She grinned. It was noon. She asked, “Would you and Julian like some salads for lunch? I just bought some fresh Chilean sea bass—”

“I'll fix it,” Julian interrupted.

Half an hour later, we were diving into thick slices of bass poached in butter and garlic, topped with a chiffonade of basil, and perched on a salad of microgreens dressed with a freshly made lemon vinaigrette. I felt revived. Julian asked if he could do the dishes, then swim his laps. Marla told him to skip the dishes and go ahead.

After Marla and I cleaned up, I checked in with Tom. He'd gotten the all-clear, and would be at Marla's at five. I put my previous funk aside and concentrated on the coming party.

The
slap-slap
of Julian's methodical swimming gave me extra energy as I bustled around checking my lists, fluffing linens out over rented tables, and setting the buffet with what Marla had insisted on: china and flatware, with plastic cups for drinks, so that the kids and parents could have their beverages out by the pool.

The sun began its long slide between thin layers of pink cloud on its way to the Continental Divide. Those jagged peaks above the timberline, still sheened in snow, glowed in the afternoon light. When I answered the door—to pick up sword-shaped floral decorations thick with red carnations and dark blue delphiniums—playing children were calling to each other from the street at the end of Marla's driveway. The sweet mountain air was cool, perfect weather for energetic teenagers wanting to
par-tay.

Marla nodded at the arrangements before placing them on her long dining room table. “I told the florist to make them masculine. Okay, look, Holly called. Afraid I have some bad news.”

“Not about the party.”

“No. You know a local caterer named Kathie Beliar?”

“I thought Kathie Beliar was a substitute teacher.”

Marla shook her head. “Not anymore. She's opened a catering company she's calling Goldy's Catering.”

“What?”

“She phoned Father Pete when Holly was in his office, and offered to do the church dinner for half of whatever you were charging.”

“But I'm not—”

“I know. Holly told Father Pete, who was confused, that I was still paying for that meal. So Holly left a scurrilous message on Kathie's voice mail, telling her not to try to undercut you. Kathie then called Holly back, saying she would do tonight's party, which she'd heard about from somebody at the club, for half of whatever you were charging.”

“But I'm not—”

“Wait,” said Marla, motioning to her own laptop, which she kept on a desk in her kitchen. “Did you not register your business as a domain name?”

I shook my head while looking in wonder at www.goldilocks
catering.com. There was Kathie Beliar, whom our local librarians had often said looked like me, with her hair cut and curled like mine. Why anyone would want to look like an aging Shirley Temple was beyond me. But there was my doppelgänger, standing in front of a van that had been decorated to look like mine, with a phone number only one digit off mine.

I said, “But her name's
Kathie
.”

Marla said, “So? Your actual name is Gertrude.”

I sighed. “I can't deal with this right now. My business is almost booked for the summer anyway.”

Marla said gently, “I know. I just thought you should know, in case anyone brings it up tonight.”

“Thanks.” I swallowed and tried to refocus my attention. “Now, where are you going to put the drinks?” That's when we discovered that each of us had bought plastic cups. Unfortunately, we both thought the
other
one was providing beverages.

“Not to worry,” Marla trilled, as she bounded off for her Mercedes. She called over her shoulder that she would buy cases of nonalcoholic drinks for the kids, and beer and wine for the adults. She promised to be back before the food was served.

Tom, handsome and smiling, appeared just before five. Julian, his hair wet from his shower, joined us. A few moments later, Arch piloted his Passat up the driveway, and the first batch of his pals spilled out.

“Drew's mom is bringing him,” Arch announced. He wore flip-flops, khaki cutoffs, and a T-shirt featuring the logo of a band I'd never heard of. “The rest of the guys are parking down on the street.” He nodded to me, but his eyes contained a warning:
Hug this birthday boy at your peril.

I hadn't been paying attention to my driving and had almost hit a guy in Marla's neighborhood. I'd run my van into a boulder. A rival caterer in town was trying to steal my business, starting with the name.

But at least I hadn't strung up a piñata.

3

B
y half past five, most of the fencing-team parents and kids, plus assorted girlfriends, had shown up. The boys' bald heads always gave my heart a jolt. They'd all shaved their scalps in sympathy with one of their teammates. He'd been stricken with leukemia and was going through chemo. The boy was doing well, but wouldn't be at the party.

The parents marched through to Marla's kitchen, proudly holding their favorite Mexican dishes aloft. Tom asked them how long their entrées needed to heat, and if anything ought to be refrigerated. Then, as carefully as he took notes at a crime scene, he wrote down everything in his notebook.

Marla honked the announcement of her arrival. Parked behind other vehicles in her own driveway, she called for Tom to push out a dolly so he could haul in three cases of Dutch beer, two of nonalcoholic brew, a case of wine, and several twenty-four-packs of juice, water, and pop. Tom placed all the drinks in Marla's second refrigerator, located in the garage.

“I'm having a shower and getting dressed,” she said, then disappeared. Fifteen minutes later, while Julian and I were assembling the chips and guacamole, she trotted into the kitchen. That had to be another record. She flicked her highlighted gold-and-brown hair back from her ears to reveal dangling chocolate diamond earrings. She cocked a hip and presented herself, swathed in a leopard-print pantsuit with a sequined belt.

“You look fantastic,” I told her. “Anyone who can lose that much weight—”

But I didn't finish the thought, because Marla wasn't listening. Suddenly distracted, she gazed over my shoulder, through the kitchen windows with their magnificent view of her pool and her flat land, and beyond, the mountains. She asked, “When did Bob Rushwood and Ophelia Unger arrive?”

“Bob Rushwood?” I asked, puzzled. “The trainer from Aspen Meadow Country Club? What's he doing here? Why is Ophelia Unger here? Her party isn't until Monday night.”

“They came while you, boss, were helping the Smythes bring in their dishes. You were out getting the drinks, Marla.” Julian tilted his head to indicate the windows. “Ophelia is engaged to Bob. They're going to do their pitch when I'm trying to make my first round with the appetizers the parents brought.”

“What
pitch?” I asked.

“Okay, this was not my idea,” Julian said defensively. “Arch came in and said Drew had worked with Bob last summer digging trails. You know, Pails for Trails?”

I nodded, recalling the bright red pails beside cash registers in every store in Aspen Meadow. Glued on the front were photographs of kids in wheelchairs being pushed up mountain trails that had been widened by a large cadre of volunteers whose tools were bought with the change people dropped into the pails. Okay, great idea. But I didn't want anyone making a
pitch
for
anything
at my son and his friend's party.

“He promised just to talk for five minutes,” Julian went on. “He's looking for kids to help with the trails this summer. One mother told Bob it was
unseemly
—I'm quoting here—for Bob to be trying to sign up trail-building volunteers at a birthday party. And Bob said, first of all, Drew had invited him. Second, Bob said, he'd had one kid work on the trails for two summers, then Bob wrote him a recommendation, and the kid got into Harvard. And did this parent want her kid to go to an Ivy League school? The mother practically fell over herself ushering Bob out back.”

Marla rolled her eyes at me. “Has he started talking yet? Set the timer. I don't want muscle-bound Bob and dreary Ophelia talking more than five minutes.”

“She's not dreary,” I said. “She's shy.”

“Not to mention totally clueless in the fashion department.”

“Marla, that's—”

“Did you set the timer?”

I obligingly set the stupid timer and peered out beyond the newly dug horseshoe pitches. I knew Bob Rushwood only by sight. With a black Spandex top and leggings showing off his wide shoulders and brawny legs, he was one of those ageless athletes who looked thirty but could be forty. I frowned. And who would choose to put beautiful dark brown hair into dreads?

Tom appeared from behind me. “What are you looking at? Or are you looking at a person?”

“Do any fortyish white athletes you know wear dreads?” I asked.

Tom peered out the window and saw Bob. “Absolutely.”

“But don't big, manly athletes avoid hairdressing salons?”

“Miss G., if you make the kind of money professional athletes do, you can pay for a hairdresser to come to your
house
.”

At Bob's side, Ophelia Unger was shorter than her fiancé. She wore black-framed glasses, and was thinner than I remembered. Her shaggy dark hair was longer than I recalled, too. Her attractive face was set in a bored expression. Clearly, the trail-digging enterprise didn't make
her
want to go to Harvard. Where Bob's tight outfit stretched across his pecs, abs, and other muscles I didn't have, Ophelia sported a lime collared shirt, lime Bermuda shorts, and sandals. I wondered about what Neil had said, that Ophelia seemed so unhappy. She certainly
looked
miserable enough.

On Marla's grass, the kids and parents listening to Bob lounged in various states of repose. Two boys appeared to be asleep.

I said, “Apparently, the idea of building trails isn't meeting with enthusiasm.”

“D'you think?” Marla replied from beside me. The timer hadn't gone off, but never mind. With the parents watching, she pulled out a frying pan and a metal spoon and raced onto her back porch. Julian snorted with laughter as she banged on the pot and shouted to Bob and Ophelia that their time was up.

I glanced around for Tom, who had disappeared. Then I spotted him, setting up Marla's new volleyball net next to the horseshoe pitches. What a guy.

It was time to start baking the entrées. Tom had preheated Marla's ovens and left the schedule where I could see it. I put dish after dish onto the racks: Julian's foil-covered chile relleno tortas, my
enchiladas suizas,
the Boatfields' tostadas, arroz con pollo from the Smythes, empanadas from the Mikulskis.

The adults who hadn't been listening to the presentation on trail digging were milling about Marla's kitchen, stirring gazpacho, grating cheddar,
queso,
and Monterey Jack cheeses, spooning soft dollops of sour cream and guacamole into crystal bowls. A few of them wandered into the backyard to help Tom with the net.

With her usual fanfare, Holly arrived. She dinged unnecessarily and repeatedly on Marla's doorbell.
Summoning her audience,
I thought, with a smile. It was twenty-five minutes after the party was supposed to have started. I'd never known Holly to be on time for anything.

When I opened the door, instead of seeing her smiling face and hearing her humor-filled voice, I saw only Drew, who had high cheekbones, was six inches taller than his mother, and sported the same shaved head as his teammates.

“Where's your mom?” I asked.

Drew pointed, and I looked around. Holly, huddled beside Marla's door, wore a sparkly silver designer pantsuit with complicated folds and creases. The shimmery fabric had been skillfully cut away to show off her tanned, buff shoulders, which she'd draped loosely with more glittery fabric. She'd swept her blond hair back. Holly didn't look like a parent; she looked like a model who'd been given the wrong outfit for a backyard barbecue. Stringed bags hung from each of her hands. She glanced fearfully down the driveway, where, I now realized, a tall, well-built, balding man was standing. I was willing to bet his male-pattern baldness was owing to age, not choice.

A fringe of sandy hair around the man's collar made me look twice. Was this the guy I'd almost hit that morning? If so, he was no longer wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Oh, how I wished I'd gotten a good look at him . . . before I hit the boulder.

“Let me in quickly,” Holly said to me.

“Mom,” said Drew, “who is that guy?”

“Nobody,” she said. It was clearly a lie. “Goldy, don't look. Don't give him the satisfaction.”

I couldn't help myself; I craned forward to get a better view of the stranger. But in the gathering gloom, I could only make out an unmoving male. Apart from the bit of sandy hair, all I could tell was that he was perhaps in his early fifties. He had a pale, moon-shaped face. He may have been tall and brawny, but his ill-fitting, long-sleeved shirt and rumpled pants did him no favors. His expression was gloomy, as if someone in his family had just died.

“Holly,” I began, “what the—”

Holly slipped through the door. Drew quickly followed. I continued to stare at the odd-looking man until I heard Holly's bags hit the floor. One of her powerful hands pulled me back inside. She firmly shut the door.

“He's a son of a bitch,” she hissed, her blue eyes ferocious.

“Is he a
dangerous
son of a bitch?”

Holly looked unsure, and I recalled the moon-faced man's unhappy expression, his body slouched in apparent defeat. Was this the guy who'd wanted to know where the party was, who'd wanted to know if Holly would be here? Had he been lurking on Arnold Palmer Avenue that morning? And could he
really
have been one of Holly's former boyfriends? He hadn't been particularly good-looking. Like Ophelia, he lacked fashion sense. Even George Ingleby was handsome, in a broad-faced, bearded, Russian-army-officer sort of way, and always dressed in khaki slacks and a tailored shirt. The guy in Marla's driveway looked like an advertisement for Goodwill.

Yet there was something about Goodwill Man that had appeared familiar, apart from the fact that I thought I might have almost mowed him down that morning. What was it? I grasped for the memory, but it was just out of reach. Had I catered an event where he'd been a guest? If that was the case, the party lay in the distant past.

Holly said, “You should tell Tom to get out his service revolver. Just in case.”

“Holly,” I demanded, “who
was
that guy?” Even florists, I thought, send sterner-looking individuals.

“See if he's gone,” she commanded.

I scanned the driveway. The man had turned his back on Marla's house and was slowly, carefully, making his way toward the street.

“Crisis over,” I said, my tone reassuring. “Come see Marla's kitchen.” I hugged Holly, but she remained stiff. I added, “Really, Holly, that guy looked as if he'd rather be anywhere than standing out in the driveway.”

“You have to trust me. He's crazy.”

“I don't know about crazy. He certainly didn't look
happy
.” I tried to make my voice comforting. I picked up her bags as she scooted into Marla's living room and peered back down the driveway.

“Dammit!” she exclaimed. “He stopped walking. What a nightmare.”

Pink with embarrassment, Drew hovered in the foyer. “Where is everybody?” he asked, his voice fretful.

I said, “Out back. Tom's there, too, Holly, so if you'd be more comfortable being near my big, strong, police-officer husband, you could follow your son.”

“No, no, that's all right. Sorry,” Holly said, as she lifted the glittering wrap off her shoulders, shook it out, then rearranged it over her shoulders, like wings. She smiled at us, and for a moment it was the old Holly, mischievous and jokey. “Did you hear about the guy selling chickens? He ended up with egg on his face.” Drew rubbed his scalp, gave a sideways grin that revealed a dimple in one cheek, and opened his eyes wide.
Watch my mom being her usual self!
He shifted from foot to foot, impatient to be away. “All right, Drew,” said Holly, “go ahead.”

“Are you going to tell me who that man was?” I asked.

“I really don't want to talk about him,” said Holly.

“I'm more worried about you,” I replied softly. I didn't mention losing her house or transferring Drew, but I wanted to give her an opening. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I'm fine.” She smiled again, but her tone was guarded. She came close to my left ear and whispered, “I need to talk to you. In private.”